Perhaps I typed too soon...

Two weeks ago (it's been awhile, I know) I wrote that things were looking good for Ghana. They still are, with one key exception. If Ghana's football team was on fire, unfortunately so too was its Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Last Thursday, the entire 10-story building went up in flames after either 1) a faulty air conditioner wasn't properly fixed or 2) three security guards set the building ablaze. (Which one of the two it was remains under investigation.)

The situation is disheartening for Ghanaians, to say the least; it will cost the government millions of dollars to repair, or more likely rebuild, the Ministry. But it's also personally disheartening, because it destroys my last mental defense against the dark forces of confusion and incompetency. Whenever I encounter some systemic breakdown, whether a near-crash on a tro-tro traversing a major road that has been "under construction" for four years or a shortage of malaria prophylaxis at one of Ghana's biggest hospitals, I comfort myself with the thought that “if it were something really important, it would be dealt with.” Well, I've spent the past week trying to think of things more important than saving the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and it's a short list.

The whole situation illustrates on a massive and destructive scale the same inconveniences that many Ghanaians deal with on a daily basis, usually related to some sort of government or public service delay, shortage, breakdown, misinformation or outright incompetency.

First of all, the blaze could not be contained because one of Accra's two firetrucks is under repair, and the other – actually located in a smaller city down the coast from Accra – lacks a working extendable spinning ladder, so firefighters were unable to reach the blaze. Second, it was nearly impossible to get enough water to the site to combat the flames. There's a water reservoir next to the Ministry specifically for that purpose but the pump was not working, probably because it was not consistently maintained.

As the flames went up and the building came down, spectators bemoaned two things. First, the loss of valuable office equipment. In most developed countries, office equipment would be an afterthought, the kind of trivial misfortune only insurance accountants would worry about. When you realize how difficult and expensive it probably was for the Ministry to obtain those copiers, printers, and computers, however, the tragedy of it all becomes more apparent. Second, very few of the Ministry's documents were backed up electronically. Thus some 52 years of historical and policy archives have been reduced to ash that will mix with red dust and float across the city, covering some unsuspecting tro-tro passenger who would never imagine that his shoes bore the only remnants of Kwame Nkrumah's notes to foreign dignitaries.

If you'd like to read more, here's the article: http://www.graphicghana.com/news/page.php?news=4831



On Tuesday the Chinese government "offered to help” rebuild the Ministry, just as it has “offered to help” Ghana renovate its regional airports and redo its roads. (How kind of them!) The symbolism of the Chinese rebuilding the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is rather striking – could there be better (or more directly observable) evidence of the influence China is trying to exert on Ghana's foreign policy?

I promise that not all news from Ghana is so negative, despite the tone of my post. I spent this weekend in Accra at an interesting and hopeful OpenAccess conference focused on increasing access to ICT infrastructure and research. Since everyone spent much of the conference typing furiously on their computers, I could have written another post already, but you'll have to wait a couple of days nonetheless...